Waking Nightmare (40 page)
“No.” Abbie tore her gaze away from the razor blade and stared steadily at her sister. Callie needed calm right now, she needed someone to be rational.
She didn’t need to know that just the sight of the blade had those old scars itching again. Brought the memories hurtling back of that first slice, the burn, followed by a curious numbness. And then the scalding pain that had followed. Pain like her sister had been experiencing just yards away.
“Take it.”
When Callie tried to push the blade into her hand, she stepped away. “We need to get you lined up with a therapist down here, Callie. Someone who can see to your medication. I’ll come with you. I’ll stay with you the whole time.”
But her sister was insistent. “I don’t need therapy, I need
this
.
You
need this.
Take
it. Just one cut. Feel it again, Abbie. Can you feel it?”
this
.
You
need this.
Take
it. Just one cut. Feel it again, Abbie. Can you feel it?”
“Callie, you and I can—”
“I said feel it!” Callie shrieked, bringing her hand swiftly across his sister’s arm, above the elbow. And then stared, eyes round and horrified, as the slice in the sleeve rapidly soaked with blood.
There was a familiar buzzing in Abbie’s ears, that light-headed feeling of being disconnected from it all. From the pain. The fear. And then air hit the open wound and the numbness was replaced by burning. A burning that would turn to agony with one more slice. And then another.
“Abbie, I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” Callie’s face crumpled and she dropped the blade, flinging her arms around her sister. “I didn’t mean it. I never want to see you hurt. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s all right,” Abbie whispered, staring blindly over her sister’s shoulder. “It’s going to be all right.” Awkwardly, she disengaged herself, spread the rip in her shirt apart to assess the damage.
With a sinking stomach, she realized that the wound wasn’t going to be taken care of with a couple butterfly bandages. “C’mon, Callie, I need to go get this stitched.” She reached out to lift her sister’s chin with one hand, gazed into her stricken face. “And you need to get a new prescription.”
“I’ll drive you.” Callie seemed to pull herself together then, looking frantically around for her purse. “Let me just get you a clean towel to put over your arm.”
Abbie watched her sister bustle around, taking charge, bringing out a dampened washcloth, finding her keys. But when it was time to leave, Abbie remained in place. “I’m not going unless you agree to place a call to Dr. Faulkner. Now. Tonight.”
Something flickered in Callie’s expression and she crossed the room to tug on Abbie’s uninjured arm. “We can discuss it later. C’mon now. Before you bleed all over.”
The blood was seeping between Abbie’s fingers. She could feel it trickling down her arm, dripping to the floor. But she didn’t take her eyes off her sister. “Not until you promise. You call him tonight. I pick up the medication. I watch you take it. Promise, Callie.”
Callie moistened her lips, looking everywhere but at her sister. Then she stared at the hand Abbie had clamped over her wound, where the blood was seeping through her fingers, and her throat worked convulsively.
“I promise.”
Chapter 18
“What can I do you for, Savannah?”
The gravelly voice on the other end of the phone matched the image posted on the department website for Montana’s Elk Run County’s sheriff. Mick Jepperson was a balding, red-faced, burly man, a twenty-two-year veteran of the department. Ryne was hoping the man’s experience matched his capable demeanor.
“I’m working a serial rapist investigation here, and—”
“That so-called Nightmare Rapist? Saw something about that on the news.”
Great. So the media attention had gone national. Ryne pushed the realization aside to be worried over later. “We’ve gotten a recent break on the drug the UNSUB uses to subdue his victims. Something that points to a possible connection with Ketrum Pharmaceuticals.”
“Ketrum?” The sheriff’s voice went guarded. “They’re big business in our parts. Biggest employer in the area. We’re pretty isolated out this way. You can imagine what it means to our tax base to have a fancy new company start up with almost two hundred new jobs.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He gave the man a brief rundown on Han’s findings, finishing with, “I’m checking the pharmaceutical end first. I have a list of other companies working with it, of course, but Ketrum is using it in clinical trials, putting them well ahead of the pack. Not surprisingly, they aren’t releasing the names of the team members working on the trials.”
“Interesting, but I’m still not sure how I can help.”
Ryne could hear the dwindling patience in the man’s tone and abruptly switched gears. “I was wondering if you’ve had any incident reports that stand out. Rapes or assaults where the victim claims to have been drugged.”
“Nope. We have our share of violent crime, but nothing like urban areas. Had us an attempted murder case last night, but I’m thinking we’ll be solving that as soon as we track down the estranged husband.”
His shot in the dark appeared to be going nowhere. “So no sexual assaults?”
He could hear the shrug in the sheriff’s voice. “Sure. But not like what you’re dealing with.” He was silent for a moment. “Had a case eight, ten months ago where a girl was attacked. A runaway, who’d been doing some underage drinking in the bars. Rape kit showed violent intercourse, and she was roughed up pretty good, but she wasn’t much help identifying her attacker, or giving us anything to go on. Kept saying she’d been really out of it during much of the assault.”
Interest sharpening, Ryne asked, “Do you have an address? I’d like to talk to her.”
“An address wouldn’t do you much good. A few weeks after she was delivered back home, she took off again. Far as I know, she hasn’t returned.”
Shoving aside a stab of frustration, Ryne said, “What about her tox screen? Do you still have a copy of it?”
“Sure. It ought to be in the case file. You want a copy? Near as I can remember, it didn’t come up with anything definite.”
“But it can be compared to the victims in my case.” Ryne gave him his fax number. “We’ve got lab priority on this. I’ll be able to get back to you within a few days.” Now that he had the man’s interest, he shifted tactics. “What would be really helpful is the names of the individuals working directly on the TTX trials for Ketrum.”
The man was silent for a moment. Slowly he admitted, “Well, I do have a deputy whose wife works in human resources out there. It’s no secret in these parts that she can talk the ear off a jack mule. If anyone knows what goes on at that facility, it’d be her.”
Squelching a surge of excitement, Ryne elicited the man’s promise to follow up with the deputy’s wife and get back to him tomorrow. Only minutes after ending the call, the fax in the corner of the room began to whir. Giving another look at the empty desk beside him, Ryne got up to collect the tox screen Jepperson had sent.
He hadn’t heard from Abbie since she’d left work last night, and he was starting to worry. Her car had been in the drive but she hadn’t answered the door or her phone when he’d gotten to her place close to midnight last night. He’d figured she’d changed her mind and gone to bed rather than wait up for him and he couldn’t say that he blamed her.
But it had been impossible not to be disappointed.
He scooped up the tox results and started back to his desk. That disappointment should be a wake-up call. He was beginning to rely too much on seeing her at the end of the day; discussing the case with her, or not talking at all, which was even better. There was nothing like mind-blowing sex to ease the normal stress and pressure of the job.
But he’d be lying to himself if he claimed it was just the sex that kept him going back, like a damn homing pigeon to the roost. He liked being near her, liked the feel of her in his arms all night. Liked the look of her, tousled and drowsy in the morning. And he was very much aware of what kind of trouble that meant.
Hell of it was, he’d never been one to walk away from trouble.
He went to the receptionist’s desk. “Marcy, has Phillips called in?”
The blond woman never looked up from her keyboard. “Not since this morning.”
Which had been a short terse message informing him only that she’d be late today. With a shrug, he headed back to his desk, prepared to go through the cases she’d highlighted in the ViCAP file. His cell phone rang before he’d gotten through half a dozen cases.
“It’s Abbie.” Her voice sounded weary. “Something came up with Callie last night. That’s where I’ve been today, too. I’m on my way across town now, though. Thought I’d swing by and start interviewing the neighbors at Larsen’s first address, unless you have something else for me.”
“That sounds fine.” And it was a relief, more than it should have been, just to hear her voice, even if she sounded distracted and impersonal. “Ashley Hornby’s sister is in town. I told her you’d be contacting her.” He gave her the number. “If I’m not here when you get in, give me a call. I want to hear what you come up with.”
After she’d promised to do so, he disconnected, and stared blindly at the binder. She hadn’t gone into details about the events of last night, but that didn’t stop him from wondering. Didn’t stop him from worrying about the effect the antics of her unstable sister might have on her, and what the hell was he supposed to do with that?
Shove it aside, he decided grimly, and forget about it. Abbie didn’t need protecting, and he sure as hell didn’t have the time to spend worrying about something that was none of his business. Four, quite possibly five, rape victims and an offender they still couldn’t ID were more than enough to occupy his mind.
Letting a woman take up residence there was downright dangerous.
Wearily, Abbie nosed her car into the driveway and pulled around to the back. She’d always hated coming home in the dark, but had a small keychain flashlight for nights such as these. Right now she thought she might be just tired enough not to mind the shadows. All she wanted was to fall into bed and sleep for eight straight hours.
The ER visit had turned into an all-night affair, first to get the twelve stitches in her arm, and then waiting for the psych consult for Callie. The psychiatrist, Dr. Solem, at St. Joseph/ Candler had consulted over the phone with Dr. Faulkner, and Abbie had watched Callie take the resulting medication herself. Her sister had an appointment for later that week to see Solem, and if the time lapse had Abbie nervous, she had no one to blame but herself.
She turned off the engine and took her keys from the ignition, finding the keychain penlight and thumbing on the switch. What was she supposed to have said when asked if Callie was a danger to herself or to anyone else? The act of bringing the blade to Abbie’s place showed just how far Callie had cycled. But she hadn’t meant to injure her. Abbie honestly believed the vows her sister had made over and over during the course of the night. Hurting her little sister had been the last thing Callie had ever wanted.
Swinging the driver door open, she reached for her computer case and got out of the car, pushing the door shut with her hip. She’d put her sister to bed in the hotel where she’d been staying, a fairly respectable if low-budget place, and sat with her while she’d finally slept, tears of regret still damp on her face over the harm she’d caused Abbie.
And then Abbie had sat for hours beside the bed, staring blindly out the window as early dawn had turned into daylight, caught up in the past and reflecting on the hold it still had on them both.
She pointed the beam of the small flashlight toward her back porch and rounded the car. It had been nearly six before she’d returned to headquarters after interviewing several of Larsen’s former neighbors and consoling Hornby’s grieving sister. Ryne had been nowhere in sight, nor had he answered his cell. She’d worked a few more hours but he’d never returned, and she’d been more than ready to call it a day.
She’d made two phone calls to Callie throughout the day, both of which her sister had dutifully answered. Tomorrow, though, she needed to see her, to determine for herself that Callie was taking the meds the way she . . .
She saw the flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. Instinct had her dropping the computer case. Reaching for her weapon. But a weight caught her and slammed her against the trunk of her car forcefully, catching her injured arm between her body and the metal.
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